1. Field
The described embodiments relate to operating computing devices. More specifically, the described embodiments relate to a technique for conditionally bypassing memory requests to a main memory instead of sending the memory requests to a cache for resolution.
2. Related Art
Many modern computing devices (e.g., laptop/desktop computers, smart phones, set-top boxes, appliances, etc.) include a processing subsystem with one or more caches. Caches are generally smaller, fast-access memory circuits located in or near the processing subsystem that can be used to store data that is retrieved from lower levels of a memory hierarchy in the computing device (i.e., other, larger caches and/or memories) to enable faster access to the stored data.
During operation of such computing devices, memory requests are sent to a cache in an attempt to quickly resolve the memory requests. When attempts to resolve memory requests in the cache fail, the memory requests are forwarded to lower levels of the memory hierarchy to be resolved. In some cases, attempting memory requests in the cache in this way can result in unnecessary delay in the resolution of memory requests and/or can inefficiently use system resources in the computing device.